Actor Vivek Oberoi attended Jagran Cinema Summit on Friday in Mumbai. While interacting in a panel discussion which discussed future of films, Vivek stated that Digital space is more democratic and it levels the field as compared to cinema.
Vivek Oberoi is first the mainstream actor from Bollywood who debuted in digital space with Inside Edge – An Amazon Prime Video original, so when asked him, now working in this medium are actors looking at it as reduction in stardom or they looking out to reach out global audience, Vivek said, “When inside Edge came to me, I loved the idea and concept. It was revolutionary and path breaking but lot of advisors told me that you should not do it but I think I took calculated risk, if you see all the multiplex setups today, around 2 to 2.5 crore people across India go to watch movies in theatre. We are so below saturation in terms of infrastructure to allow people to go out there to see a movie.”
“There are 40 crore people with smart phones in our country and the number is still increasing so now I have the access to distribution medium for my content that can penetrate 40 crore versus the infrastructure that can give me 2.5 crore of access so why wouldn’t I choose that and leverage that?”
“It liberates me from whole Pehlaj Nihalani censorship issue and it librates me from having to grovel me in front of multiplex chain saying give me evening show for my film and now it’s an appointment viewing. So with Inside Edge, I can watch it at 3 am in the morning, alone or with my friends and whichever place I want to be so it redefines and break whole structure which have been struggling to confirm with”
“When I go to theatre guy, he says he will not invest in my movies and he is not also willing to bear my losses but with every ticket sold, he is ready to take 50% revenue and on top of that he is not also giving me share in his canteen revenues either so I feel digital space is far more democratic and it levels the playing field and makes it fair and that’s the future of cinema”
Vivek added, “When you make a cool film like Pink but the problem is when you make film for 15 crore but to give the kind of release across 3000-4000 screens will cost me more than what I paid to produce the film. It costs me more than a content so distribution cost is prohibitive and at the same time I have to grovel to try and get those cinemas and theatre owners doesn’t give it to me but this becomes fair because if you have prime app downloaded on 5 crore phones then you have access of all 5 crore phones so if they believe in your content so you could do the same business as a film that is five times expensive than my show”
Vivek Oberoi was last seen in Bank Chor which was produced by Yash Raj Films and it released in 2017.
